regarded in the “Divina Commedia” is visible in scarcely less degree in the earlier work.  The imagination which makes the unseen seen, and the unreal real, belongs alike to the one and to the other.  The “Vita Nuova” is chiefly occupied with a series of visions; the “Divina Commedia” is one long vision.  The sympathy with the spirit and impulses of the time, which in the first reveals the youthful impressibility of the poet, in the last discloses itself in maturer forms, in more personal expressions.  In the “Vita Nuova” it is a sympathy mastering the natural spirit; in the “Divina Commedia” the sympathy is controlled by the force of established character.  The change is that from him who follows to him who commands.  It is the privilege of men of genius, not only to give more than others to the world, but also to receive more from it.  Sympathy, in its full comprehensiveness, is the proof of the strongest individuality.  By as much as Dante or Shakspeare learnt of and entered into the hearts of men, by so much was his own nature strengthened and made peculiarly his own.  The “Vita Nuova” shows the first stages of that genius, the first proofs of that wide sympathy, which at length resulted in the “Divine Comedy.”  It is like the first blade of spring grass, rich with the promise of the golden harvest.

[Footnote 1:  Vita di Dante.  Milan, 1823, pp. 29, 30.]

[Footnote 2:  Vita di Dante, p. 69.]

[Footnote 3:  For vita nova in the sense of early life, see Purgatory, xxx. 115, with the comments of Landino and Benvenuto da Imola; and for eta novella in a similar sense, see Canzone xviii. st. 6.  Fraticelli, who supports this interpretation, gives these with other examples, but none more to the point.  Mr. Joseph Carrow, who had a translation into English of the Vita Nuova, printed at Florence in 1840, entitles his book “The Early Life of Dante Allighieri.”  But as giving probability to the meaning to which we incline, see Canzone x. st. 5.

  “Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne,
  Secondo che si trova
  Nel libro della mente che vien meno,
  La mia persona parvola sostenne
  Una passion nova.”

  That day when she unto the world attained,
  As is found written true
  Within the book of my now sinking soul,
  Then by my childish nature was sustained
  A passion new.

In referring to Dante’s Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they stand in the first volume of Fraticelli’s edition of the Opere Minore al Dante, Firenze, 1834.  There is great need of a careful, critical edition of the Canzoniere of Dante, in which poems falsely ascribed to him should no longer hold place among the genuine.  But there is little hope for this from Italy; for the race of Italian commentators on Dante is, as a whole, more frivolous, more impertinent, and duller, than that of English commentators on Shakespeare.]